Thursday, January 7, 2010

Gothic Revival by Walter Giersbach '61

Giersbach, Walter. "Gothc Revival." Bewilderingstories.com

Submitted by R. Stuhr

Writer and contributer to the Book Review blog Walter Giersbach '61 recently published a piece of online short fiction at Bewilderingstories.com. Giersbach writes that his story, "Gothic Revival," began as half-hour exercise and "continued into seeing beauty in the grotesque and the grotesque in beauty." Read this from start to finish--and in that order.

Giersbach has also published other stories at Bewilderingstories.com including, "Cable Window," "Number 11," "Laura Lard Takes No Prisoners," and "The Iceberg." To read more about Walter Giersbach '61, visit his blog, Allotropic Lucubrations and check out his reviews in this blog.

Macbeth and Race: a New Publication by Scott Newstok '95

Newstok, Scott and Ayanna Thompson, editors. Weyward Macbeth: Intersections of Race and Performance. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

Submitted By R. Stuhr

Essays in this book takes an interdisciplinary look at the ways Shakespeare's Macbeth has been interpreted in American drama, poetry, film, music, history, politics, acting, and directing.

Soon to be available at the Grinnell College Libraries

Other books by Scott Newstok '95

Kenneth Burke on Shakespeare. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor Press, 2007
Burling 3rd Floor PR2976 .B79 2007

Quoting Death in Early Modern England: The Poetics of Epitaphs Beyond the Tomb. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009
Burling 3rd Floor PR428.D4 N49 2009

Asia Wheeling packs books for their ten month tour of Asia by plane, train, and bicycle

Friends of Grinnell College may know AsiaWheeling co-founder Woody Schneider, or at least his father, Mark Schneider (Physics Department). Woody departed on Monday, January 4 with co-founder Scott Norton--first stop Indonesia. For information about their ten month long itinerary as well as a full list of what they are taking along, visit their blog (linked above). Some of their support team--stationed through out greater Asia, may also be familiar to Grinnellians. They include Malaysia Bureau Chief Smita Sharma, a recent and much missed graduate, Laos Bureau Chief Stewart Motta, and Siberian Bureau Chief Helen Stuhr-Rommereim (both, like Woody, connected to the college through their parents); Grinnell faculty member David Campbell is also a consultant for AsiaWheeling.

Scott recently sent out a post listing the books they were taking along, and what could be more appropriate than posting these here at the Book Review site? So, if you are planning a ten month trip primarily by bicycle what books would you take with you?

Woody is taking:

Nick Danziger’s Danziger’s Travels: Beyond Forbidden Frontiers. New York: Vintage Books, 1987

Micheal Chabon’s Gentleman of the Road. New York: Ballentine Books, 2007
Burling Library First Floor/Smith Memorial PS3553.H15 G46 2007

Scott is taking:

Edward W. Said's Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1994
Burling First Floor DS12 .S24 2003

David Byrne's Bicycle Diaries. New York: Viking, 2009
Burling Library First Floor/Smith Memorial GV1044 .B97 2009

Niall Ferguson's The Cash Nexus: Money and Power in the Modern World, 1700-2000
Burling 2nd Floor HJ235 .F47 2001

Justin Ben-Adam Rudelson's Central Asia Phrasebook. Hawthorne, Vic: Lonely Planet, 1998.

Luxe Travel Guides for Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Laos & Cambodia, Phuket


Bon Voyage and Safe Travels Woody and Scott

Submtted by Rebecca Stuhr

Saturday, January 2, 2010

Martin Stuhr-Rommereim read over the Winter Break ...

Collins, Suzanne. Catching Fire. New York: Scholastic Press, 2009.
Martin couldn't put down this sequal to Collins' Hunger Games (2008), a novel which Martin also highly recomends. The heroine and hero of the first novel, after surviving their society's brutal ritual ordeal, find that they have consequences to face as their story continues in Catching Fire.

Kim, Yong. The Long Road Home: Testimony of a North Korean Camp Survivor. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. The title is descriptive. Kim tells the story of his life, the events leading to his imprisonment, and his escape.

Burling 2nd Floor HV9815.6 .K56 2009 .

Sister Pelagia and the Black Monk

Akunin, Boris. Sister Pelagia and the Black Monk. New York: Random House, 2008.

Submitted by Mark Schneider

I greatly enjoyed Boris Akunin's second novel in the Sister Pelagia
trilogy: Sister Pelagia and the Black Monk. Set roughly a century and
a half ago in Russia, the not-your-average nun Sister Pelagia, who has
a penchant for solving mysteries, takes on the task of unraveling the
peculiar deaths and hauntings at the remote monastery at New Ararat.
Sister Pelagia does so without the blessings of Bishop Mitrofanii, but
only after several other investigators sent by the bishop have died or
gone mad at the hands of the spectral Black Monk, and after the Bishop
himself has collapsed from shock and grief at the unfolding
catastrophe. Sister Pelagia risks her life and excommunication to
find out whether the culprit is evil spirit, criminal mastermind, or
madman. If you like mystery writers such as Tony Hillerman or Randy
Wayne White, where the novel is as much about culture and history as
figuring out whodunit, you'll love Akunin's novels, and the Black Monk
is probably my favorite among them.

The Grinnell College Libraries are well stocked with books by Boris Akunin (Akunin, B. (Boris)), but all but one are in Russian. The one is The Winter Queen. Burling 3rd Floor PG3478.K78 A9713 2003.